Senphor of Senegal savs “Socialism is a spnsc of cnm.
munity which is a return to Africanism.” Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika insists “no underdeveloped country can afford to be anything but ‘Socialist.'” Tunisia’s Habib Bourguiba claims Mohammed’s companions “were Socialists before the invention of the word.” And Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk contends “our Socialism is first and foremost an application of Buddhism.”
The above is true, totally true, true all the way down to the deepest philosophical, psychological, political, and moral fundamentals. And this is the most damning indictment of socialism that a rational person could need to see. Socialism is a regression to primitive barbarism. But that is not the appraisal or the conclusion of the U.S.I.A. report. It is to the Mohammedans, the Buddhists, and the cannibals (the literal cannibals, this time)—to the under-developed, the undeveloped, and the not-to-be-developed cultures—that the Capitalist United States of America is asked to apologize for her skyscrapers, her automobiles, her plumbing, and her smiling, confident, untortured, un-skinned-alive, un-eaten young men!
The column ends as follows:
The study concludes that foreigners attribute to the U.S.A. “a high degree of capitalist exploitation and of capitalist power over the society as a whole, as well as a great absence of those social welfare measures which, to them, are the decisive criterion of Socialism.” [U.S.I.A.’s own italics.]
There is surely no sense in proclaiming our philosophy in terms that are unsalable and peculiarly vulnerable to our opponents’ attacks….
Our system of capitalism has evolved immensely from the outmoded economic doctrine to which the label was originally applied by Marx and other 19th-century thinkers. Might not the U.S.I.A. attempt another survey seeking ways of announcing our social and political system in a manner more acceptable to those abroad whose opinions we would influence?
Influence—how? In what direction? To what purpose? If, for the sake of appeasement, we renounce our philosophy and adopt theirs, if we discard the last remnants of capitalism and proclaim ourselves to be a “National Socialist Welfare State,” who would have “influenced”—and buried—whom?
A great many things may be observed about this unusually revealing column. It is true, of course, that if American Dronaeandists are defending capitalism abroad as they do at
home, the results would be precisely as described in that U.S.I.A. study, or worse. At home, it is the “conservatives” who are appeasing the “liberals” and losing the battle, because they dare not uphold the true nature of capitalism. Abroad, it is the “liberals” who are appeasing the communists and losing the battle, for the same reason: there is no way to defend capitalism without upholding man’s right to exist, which means, without rejecting altruism.
Observe the appalling indifference to the issue of truth or falsehood, on the part of capitalism’s alleged defenders. They attach no significance to such contradictions as sympathizing with socialism while abhorring communism—or to the fact that capitalism is the only opposite of and the only defense against communism. They attach no significance to the ignorance, the dishonesty, the injustice, the irrationality of capitalism’s critics. In the face of a moral-philosophical issue, their response is an immediate, uncritical acceptance of the critics* terms, a surrender to ignorance, dishonesty, injustice, irrationality. In the face of the knowledge that capitalism is being smeared by the communists, by the very enemy they intend to fight, their policy is not to blast the smear, not to enlighten the world, not to defend the victim, not to speak out for justice—but to sanction the smear, to hide the truth, to sacrifice the victim, to join the lynching. What they feel is: Of what account is truth in the face of such a consideration as “people don’t Jike us”? What they cry is: “But this is the way we’ll make people like the victim!”—after we’ve helped them grind her to bits in the mud. Then they wonder why contempt is all they earn, from betrayed allies and sworn enemies alike. Moral cowardice is not an attractive nor an inspiring nor a very practical trait.
Observe the obscenity of those Europeans who—in this day and age, in the rising tide of global bloodshed, in the face of the unspeakable atrocities of the “newly emerging” nations—dare prattle about “little concern for the poor” and criticize the United States for that. Whatever their motives, concern for human suffering is not one of them.
We may observe all that, but it seems almost irrelevant beside the one central, overwhelming fact: the intellectual leaders of today’s world are willing to condone and accept anything, they are willing to recognize the right of Buddhism and Africanism to their boastfully asserted traditions (remember the nature and record of those traditions)—but they make one exception. There is one country—the United States of America—who is not acceptable to them, who must renounce her tradition and, in atonement, must crawl on her
knees, begging the savages of five continents to choose a new name for her system, which would obliterate the guilt of her past. What is her guilt? That for one brief moment in human history, she offered the world the vision of unsacrificed man in a non-sacrificial way of life.
When one grasps this, one knows that it is no use arguing over political trivia, or wondering about the nature of altruism and why the reign of the altruists is leading the world to an ever widening spread of horror. This is the nature of altruism, this—not any sort of benevolence, good will, or concern for human misfortune. Hatred of man, not the desire to help him—hatred of life, not the desire to further it— hatred of the successful state of life—and that ultimate, apocalyptic evil: hatred of the good for being the good.
What every successful man (successful at any human value, spiritual or material) has encountered, has sensed, has been bewildered by, but has seldom identified, can now be seen in the open, with nations, instead of individual men, re-enacting the same unspeakable evil on a world scale where it cannot be hidden any longer. It is not for her flaws that the United States of America is hated, but for her virtues—not for her weaknesses, but for her achievements—not for her failures, but for her success—her magnificent, shining, life-giving success.
It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man. It is a conspiracy without leader or direction, and the random little thugs of the moment who cash in on the agony of one land or another are chance scum riding the torrent from the broken dam of the sewer of centuries, from the reservoir of hatred for reason, for logic, for ability, for achievement, for joy, stored by every whining anti-human who ever preached the superiority of the “heart” over the mind. {Atlas Shrugged)
With most of the world in ruins, with the voice of philosophy silent and the last remnants of civilization vanishing undefended, in an unholy alliance of savagery and decadence, bloody thugs are fighting over the spoils, while the cynical pragmatists left in charge and way out of their depth are trying to drown their panic at Europe’s cocktail parties, where emasculated men and hysterical, white-lipped women determine the fate of the world by declaring that socialism is chic.
This is the face of our age. To attempt to fight it by means of compromise, conciliation, equivocation, and circumlocution is worse than grotesque. This is not a battle to be fought by joining the enemy in any manner—nor by borrowing any of his slogans or his bloody ideological equipment—nor by deluding the world about the nature of the battle—nor by pretending that one is “in” with that sort of crowd.
It is a battle only for those who know why it is necessary to be “out”—as far out of that stream as words will carry— why, when moral issues are at stake, one must begin by blasting the enemy’s base and cutting off any link to it, any bridge, any toehold—and if one is to be misunderstood, let it be on the side of intransigence, not on the side of any resemblance to any part of so monstrous an evil.
It is a battle only for those who—paraphrasing a character in Atlas Shrugged—are prepared to say:
“Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only system that stood for man’s right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself. If this is evil, by .the present standards of the world, if this is the reason for damning us, then we—we, the champions of man—accept it and choose to be damned by that world. We choose to wear the name ‘Capitalism’ printed on our foreheads, proudly, as our badge of nobility.”
This is what the battle demands. Nothing less will do.
19. CONSERVATISM: AN OBITUARY
BY AYN RAND
Both the “conservatives” and the “liberals” stress a fact with which everybody seems to agree: that the world is facing a deadly conflict and that we must fight to save civilization.